


Break My Body, Hold My Bones

by GretaRama



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Awkward First Times, Boy Scouts, Earl's home life, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Language, Finally some porn, French Toast, Graduation, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Mentions of Sex, Or Is It?, Oral Sex, Platonic Cuddling, Porn With Plot, Rituals surrounding coffee, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-16
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-09 16:07:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 18,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4355477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretaRama/pseuds/GretaRama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Earl steps in to help when Cecil's family goes missing, and it changes their relationship forever. But will Earl's assistance ultimately do more harm than good? The tangled fates of Earl Harlan and Cecil Palmer, revealed over the course of several chapters. I'll update tags as future chapters warrant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Siege-Breaking Tactics

Earl can see that Cecil is barely holding it together, so he assumes it must be obvious to everyone; that someone else, someone older and more responsible, will see it too. One of the first things he notices is that Cecil’s scout uniform is rumpled, not clean and pressed as it always has been, and he waits for the scoutmaster to notice. Cecil’s school clothes take on a dingy cast, as if they are all being washed together and not very often, and he waits for a teacher to notice. He senses in his friend some new, deep emotion, something huge and awful that occasionally wells up to the surface. He notices that Cecil no longer looks forward to going home after school, that his hair has grown into his eyes and over his collar. He notices that Cecil has dwindled from normal teenage slenderness into a reckless thinness that speaks of hunger. And still he waits.

They are building a trebuchet for Cecil’s Advanced Siege-Breaking Tactics badge when it finally becomes clear to Earl that there is no responsible older party waiting in the wings.

“Earl?” Cecil asks, as they attach the counterweight to the throwing arm, “Your job at the diner…you know how to cook, right?”

“Sure. Well, just breakfast food, but yeah, I can cook a little.” Earl stops what he’s doing and looks up at Cecil’s thin, shadowed face. “How come?”

Cecil looks down at his hands, which are fiddling with the counterweight axle. “Could you show me? Just a few things,” he adds hastily. “If you have time?”

Earl’s mind is full of questions, but many of them already have answers, or parts of answers, anyway. He recalls a comment on his report card from the previous year, _Earl’s experiences of life have given him maturity beyond his years_ , a statement that will later seem painfully apt. He thinks of that misplaced maturity and exactly how he acquired it, and with a sensitivity borne of his own difficulties, he asks none of his questions. “Sure,” he says, instead. “Want me to come over tomorrow?”

“That would be great,” Cecil says, and his body goes loose, as if Earl had just cut a string that had been pulling all his joints tight. “Thanks.”

Earl tests the counterweight assembly, pushing the little basket and watching it swing back and forth. “Hey, Cecil?”

“Yeah?”

“How come you’re building a trebuchet, anyway? I thought they were for _laying_ sieges, not breaking them.”

“This is a fetish trebuchet, a proxy for the opposing force’s full-size siege engine. You build small replicas, and imbue them with sympathetic magic through targeted chanting. It causes your enemy’s trebuchets to turn against them.”

“Like a voodoo doll? Seriously?”

Cecil holds up his scout manual and nods. “Seriously.”

“That’s cool.”

“I told you it would be a neat badge,” Cecil says, and Earl smiles to himself, because for the first time in months, Cecil seems a little like his old self.

* * *

The unusual silence and stillness of the house is immediately noticeable as Earl steps onto the front porch the following day. Newspapers wither to papier-mâché on the overgrown lawn, the always unruly juniper bush has grown so tall it covers the kitchen's picture window, and then there is the silence. No television, no voices, no lawn mowers droning or washing machines thumping, just...silence. He half expects his knock to go unanswered, but within a few seconds he hears footsteps padding across the tiled entryway, and Cecil opens the door.

“Hey,” he says, rubbing his eyes. He is wearing purple plaid pajama pants and an oversized NVCR t-shirt, and holds one skinny arm up to shield his eyes from the sun.

“Hey,” Earl says, holding up the grocery bag from Ralph’s. “How about some breakfast?”

Neither of them mentions the absence of Cecil’s family, the covered mirrors, the dust that has settled on every flat surface, the "nobody's home" stillness that pervades Cecil’s house, but Earl notices, and Cecil notices him noticing. They head to the kitchen and start unpacking groceries, all while avoiding eye contact, as if a meeting of their eyes would necessitate the acknowledgment of the family that is no longer there.

Earl busies himself with the preparation of the egg mixture and Cecil places slices of bread into the flat-bottomed dish. “It doesn’t seem so hard,” Cecil says.

“It’s not. The hard part is getting the frying pan to the right temperature, knowing when to flip it over, stuff like that. But French toast is good even if you burn it a little. Here, I got us some coffee, too.” He tosses the bag to Cecil.

Cecil’s smile – the first Earl has seen in weeks – evaporates when he opens the bag and sees whole coffee beans. “We don’t have a grinder,” he says, and his voice is suddenly tight with the onset of tears. Earl looks up from the heating griddle in alarm. He isn’t sure what’s causing Cecil’s disproportionate reaction to this minor setback, but he can see that for some reason, the absence of a coffee grinder is about to release an avalanche of pain and frustration, everything that Cecil has been holding in check.

“No problem,” he says quickly. “Here, I’ll show you the right way to do this.” He rummages through the cabinets and drawers and finds a small metal mallet with a crenellated head – probably a meat tenderizer, but it will do – and a shallow wooden bowl.

“Have at it,” he says, pressing the mallet into Cecil’s unresponsive hand and emptying coffee beans into the bowl. Some combination of instinct and empathy prompts him to add, “Be sure to throw some harsh language at those little suckers, or at least some angry thoughts. It helps to level out some of the acidity.”

Cecil begins the task with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, but soon it becomes clear that he must apply serious force to break the beans’ hard shells. “Stupid interloping coffee beans,” he mutters, bashing them harder. “Reminding me of terrible-” _bash_ “-awful-” _bash_ “-wonderful things! Die. Die!” His face darkens with ominous concentration as he steadily reduces the beans to powder. He has to take a minute to catch his breath afterward, but to Earl’s relief, he seems relaxed and fairly normal as he scoops the pulverized coffee into the coffeemaker and sets it to burbling. The musty smell of absence is pushed aside in favor of smoky coffee and the sweet, spicy, eggy scent of the French toast.

They watch together as the first piece of toast cooks, and Earl can hear Cecil’s stomach growling as he slides it off the spatula and onto the plate. “Go ahead,” he says, laughing, pushing the plate into Cecil’s hands. “I’ll fix the rest of them.”

Before long, they’re both enjoying breakfast on the sofa in the dim living room, Cecil making small noises of pleasure at what must be his first decent meal in weeks.

“You’ll be in a food coma all day,” Earl says, picking at his own plate.

“I don’t care,” Cecil answers, his mouth still full. He stops chewing and turns to look at Earl. He sets his fork down on his plate, swallows, wraps his arms around Earl and hugs him, hard. “Thank you,” he says, his voice muffled against Earl’s chest.

“Hey,” Earl says. “I owed you. How many times did y-” He almost says “your mother,” but corrects himself midstream and passes off a fairly believable “ _you_ let me stay over when…you know. Things weren’t so great at home?” Things are never great at home, but Earl could only bring himself to ask for help when things were far beyond “not great.” He doesn’t have to imagine how desperate Cecil must have felt to ask him for a cooking lesson.

“That was different,” Cecil says.

“I guess, but still…I’d hang out with you anyway. I’d show you how to cook even if things were, uh, different.”

“You can still stay over if you want,” Cecil says, his eyes large and hopeful on Earl’s. “Whenever you want to.”

Earl would stay over every night, given the choice, and he studies Cecil carefully, gauging his seriousness. “Do you mind?” he asks. “I have work today but after…”

“That would be great!” Cecil brightens instantly. “I have to go down to the station today, too.”

“Okay,” Earl says. “As long as it’s okay with you.” He puts an arm around Cecil’s bony body and squeezes reassuringly. Cecil, who is still leaning against his shoulder, glances up at him, and suddenly it seems that their faces are awfully close together, that all Earl would have to do is lean forward a little, just an inch or so, and something interesting might happen.

He can smell the sleep-sweet smell of Cecil’s hair mingling with the maple syrup and coffee, and he feels the sharp edge of longing for _something,_ something urgently, terrifyingly physical. This mysterious thing between them has been growing increasingly complex since they left true boyhood behind and became teenagers. Now it’s closer than it has ever been, and Earl is excited and frightened in equal measure.

He thinks about closing that distance now, seeing what would happen, but he can’t quite bring himself to do it. Cecil is lonely and scared and vulnerable, desperate for comfort, exuding a sense of need that Earl isn’t sure he can answer. And besides all that, Earl can’t quite extinguish an awful little spark of resentment toward the other boy. If someone’s family had to vanish, he wonders, why couldn’t it have been _his?_

* * *


	2. Hard Luck Story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Earl stops by home, with predictably depressing results.

Earl’s mother is awake when he gets home.

He had hoped to get in and gather some of his things before she woke up, but as soon as he enters the house he smells the unmistakable stench of her hand-rolled cigarettes drifting from the kitchen, hears the obnoxious sounds of a morning news program blasting from the TV. 

He slips off his shoes, hurries silently upstairs and starts packing. Two dress uniforms, two casual, his handbook, his apron, his toothbrush, and his treasured and dog-eared copy of Ludwig Bemelman’s _La Bonne Table_. He places each item neatly in his duffel bag, and for a few minutes, as he creeps silently back down the hall toward the stairs, he thinks he might make it. _I’ll just pick up my shoes and run for it,_ he thinks as he eases down the first few steps. _She might hear the door bang, but I’ll be gone, and she won’t-_

“Where in the hell do you think you’re going?” Earl’s heart plummets. His mother is leaning against the hall closet door, a bent and twisted cigarette streaming smoke from between yellowed fingers, eyes bleary. 

“I’ve got work,” he says. “And then I’ve got scouts. I won’t be home ‘til late.” He tries to look brisk and businesslike as he completes the last few stairs, leans over to put his shoes back on.

“Where’s the money from last night?”

“I put everything I had in the can,” he says, gesturing with his chin in the direction of the brightly colored coffee can in the kitchen where all household funds are intended to be deposited. 

“There ain’t hardly anything in the can,” she says, moving closer. He can smell the sour reek of cheap alcohol oozing from her pores, can see the red veins alongside her nose and in the whites of her eyes. 

“Maybe Bill needed it for something,” he says, nonchalantly. “I put it in the can, Mom.”

“How much?”

“What?”

“How much did you put in there when you got home last night. No, don’t think about it, just tell me. Tell me exactly how much, dollars and cents.”

“$15.75,” Earl lies quickly. This was, in fact, the amount he spent on groceries on his way to Cecil’s, the remaining three dollars from his previous night’s tips are still in his pocket.

“Maybe I should go wake Bill up and ask him if he needed it for something.”

“Maybe you should.”

“Except I know he didn’t because he was here with me all night.”

Earl squeezes his eyes shut, trying not to envision his mother and her repugnant and violent boyfriend together. He’s witnessed them in action often enough to have some idea of how they spent the evening. He opens his eyes and studies his mother, looking for the telltale signs of her standard date with Bill. Abysmal hangover? Check. Bruises and cuts? Harder to spot, but Earl knows the drill, his eyes darting to her wrists, forearms, shins, the way her body is hunched over to one side. Kidney? Broken rib?

“Well then,” Earl says, with a deep breath because it’s a calculated risk, “Maybe one of you spent it and just...forgot.”

“Forgot.” 

Earl shrugs. 

“Do you have any idea how expensive it is to raise a child?” she asks. “Doctors, schoolbooks, clothes, food...and I bet little things like rent and municipal utilities and the fees for your goddamn boy scouts never cross your goddamn redheaded mind, do they? But those costs...they add up, sweet peach.” She flicks her cigarette. Gray ashes drift toward the floor and she scuffs them into the carpet with one slippered foot.

“ _I_ paid the scouting fees, Mom,” he protests. He resists the urge to remind her that he didn’t ask to be a boy scout, he was _chosen._ That he didn’t ask to be her son, that he didn’t ask to be born. He had said it once and her retort - that she didn’t ask for him to be born, either - had hurt more than he had expected.

“And your camping supplies? And your fancy _uniforms_?”

These, too, had been paid for by Earl, and rage surges up inside him at the injustice of his situation. He wants to scream and pound his fists against the door. He wants to complain that all the other kids with after school and summer jobs get to _keep_ their money, to put it in a college fund or use it for movies or to spend during family vacations to the Arby’s. But Earl knows better than to do any of those things. He knows life is unfair, and he knows his mother is deliberately baiting him. He knows she woke up half hung-over and half drunk, ready for a scrap with him because she’s too afraid to fight with Bill. She wants to pick a fight with Earl because she knows she’ll win. She needs to win, win at _something,_ even a senseless argument with her son, because she sure as hell isn’t winning anything else. 

Earl wrestles his anger into submission and lets his head hang. “You’re right, Mama,” he says. “I’m so sorry. I should…” he grits his teeth, “I should be _thanking_ you.”

“Well, yes, you should,” she says, obviously wrong-footed by his abrupt change in tack.

“You’ve always done your best, and I have no business being so ungrateful. I m-must….I must be such a disappointment. But...I’ve got this job, and I’m even going to start working some extra late shifts, so I’ll be making more money and costing you even less.”

“I thought you weren’t allowed to work over 20 hours until you’re 17,” she says, warily, but her eyes light up all of a sudden, and she licks her lips.

Earl feels like he’s been slapped, and his body reacts as if she had struck him, his head jerking in surprise and his skin reddening. Tears well in his eyes as his mother stands, staring in bafflement.

“Yeah, that’s right,” he says. “And I turned 17 last month.”

“The hell you did,” she snaps back, but now her face is flushing red as well. There is a precarious moment, a moment in which Earl isn’t sure whether she’s about to fly into a fit of rage or back off, and he balls his hands into fists at his sides, bracing himself for the former. But then his mother’s shoulders slump and she takes a step back toward the kitchen. 

“Alright then,” she says, appeased. “You make sure you get that money back in the can pronto, or Bill’s gonna hear about it.”

“I will,” he lies, tying his shoes and gathering his duffel bag. 

“And don’t forget to kneel before the chalk spire this afternoon! I don’t want another visit from the VYMGA about your failure to abase yourself before it!”

“I won’t forget,” he calls over his shoulder as the screen door bangs shut behind him. 

He doesn’t go home again for another two weeks.


	3. Double Feature

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cecil's family is still missing, Earl's is still right where he left it, and all they have is each other.

Cecil hasn’t touched anything he doesn’t absolutely have to since his family disappeared. Not a single object has been moved unless it couldn’t be helped, as far as Earl can tell; shoes stand empty and waiting at the door, a pair of eyeglasses rest with arms open on a side table, a pencil marks a page in the newspaper where a half-finished sudoku awaits its final solution. At first he finds it unsettling, but as he and Cecil have settled into their premature independence together, the eerie expectancy of all these objects diminishes and they simply become part of the setting for his life, the way late-night arguments and the stench of stale alcohol did at his mother’s house.

On his most recent trip home, which occurs, mercifully, while both his mother and her boyfriend are passed out, Earl leaves forty dollars in the coffee can and helps himself to a bottle of wine he knows will never be missed. 

On the first day of summer vacation, he and Cecil combine their weekly pizza vouchers and bring home an extra-large, which they eat while watching a Friday double feature of “Point Blank” and “The Big Heat” on the worn sofa in the family room at Cecil’s house. They drink the entire bottle of wine with the pizza, and Earl feels warm and comfortable and loose afterward, fears and worries dulled to a mere background hum. He wonders if this is how his mother feels when she drinks, if this is part of the irresistible allure, and makes a mental note to be careful with intoxicants in the future.

Big Rico’s always includes a wax paper bag taped to the inside of the box lid that contains peppermint sticks. By the midpoint of “The Big Heat,” there’s only one left in the crinkled brown wrapper. Earl and Cecil both turn toward it at the same time, glancing sidelong at each other before lunging at the candy.

Cecil beats him by a nanosecond.

“Come _on,_ Cecil,” Earl says, leaning across the sofa and grabbing for the peppermint. “We can at least split it.”

“No way!” Cecil says, holding the candy over his head, away from Earl. “You ate most of them anyway, this one’s mine.”

Earl’s mouth drops open in outrage. “No I didn’t! You had five and I had four!”

“Well then I’m having six,” Cecil teases, as Earl tries to grab his wrist. He whips his hand away and scrambles up onto the armrest, licking the entire length of the candy, sliding it in and out of his mouth gratuitously. “There,” he says.

The gesture leaves Earl winded, as if he’s been punched in the gut. “Think that bothers me?” he says, seizing Cecil around the waist and pulling him down onto the sofa. “I don’t care _where_ you put it.”

“Oh, gross!”

“ _You’re_ gross!”

They wrestle for almost a full minute, giggling and shrieking, until Earl pins Cecil down, knees on either side of his hips, hands clasping his wrists. For a few seconds, Cecil continues to struggle, but then Earl feels the tension leave his body and he surrenders to Earl’s superior strength and leverage.

In an instant, the brotherly, familiar atmosphere dissolves. Something about what Cecil just did, his _submission_ , flicks a switch in Earl’s brain, and all the shadowy and mysterious shapes of his feelings for Cecil light up like a neon sign. Earl is suddenly hyperaware of Cecil’s body under his own, of all the places where their bodies are touching, of how close together they are, of Cecil’s warm, peppermint-scented breath on his neck. His heart pounds so hard he thinks Cecil must be able to feel it hammering against his own chest. They lie there that way for an incalculable moment, eyes locked and lungs heaving, until Earl can’t stand it for another second. Before he can even think about it, he leans forward and kisses Cecil on the lips.

Whenever he has imagined kissing someone, the appeal has been mysterious; he has understood it only as a signal of intention or a mark of affection; he never expected his body’s lightning-quick reaction to this simple mouth-to-mouth contact. For an instant he can’t even move, he’s too swamped by physical sensation, but he slowly becomes aware of Cecil’s mouth pressing gently, almost hesitantly against his, of Cecil’s body warm and welcoming beneath him, and he begins to respond in earnest.

Cecil makes a slight noise of protest beneath him, a little “Mmmph,” and Earl pulls away instantly. “I’m sorry,” he gasps, but Cecil laughs breathily and looks up at his hands, which Earl still has pinned over his head. Earl releases them and Cecil makes use of them at once, wrapping them around Earl’s waist, pulling him closer.

They’re kissing again, and Earl feels himself hardening, an uncontrollable and embarrassing phenomenon that he has considered entirely private until this moment. He isn’t quite sure whether he wants Cecil to notice or not, but before he can decide, Cecil shifts under him, sliding his legs apart so Earl’s thigh slips between them. Earl’s erection is now pressed against Cecil’s hip, and the pressure and friction are so wonderful and unexpected he almost comes on the spot. He stops moving, trying to bring his unruly body under control, but then he looks down at Cecil, who is flushed, his lips parted slightly, his eyes half-closed. He’s beautiful, and he squirms in frustration, and it’s only now that Earl realizes Cecil is just as turned on as he is, just as hard and confused and desperate. 

“Cecil?”

“Mmm?”

“Have you…done this before?”

Cecil’s eyes slide away from his, he bites his lip, the flush across the tops of his cheeks deepening. “No,” he says, “Have you?”

“No.”

“If you want to stop…?”

“I don’t want to stop,” Earl half-laughs. “I just…I don’t even really know what to do.”

“I think what you were doing was fine,” Cecil says, moving underneath Earl, rubbing their hips together. “Didn’t – didn’t you like it?”

“I _did_ like it,” Earl says. He moves his hips, grinding into Cecil, and Cecil gasps and throws his head back against the sofa cushions, groaning, which sends quivering twitches straight to Earl’s groin. He catches his breath and moves faster, gripping Cecil’s hip with one hand as he thrusts against him, and Cecil’s physical response is all the answer Earl needs.

Cecil whimpers and moans, pushing up against Earl’s leg, and Earl suddenly realizes that unless he stops _right now_ he’s going to come in his pants, and the rush of self-consciousness he feels about this does absolutely nothing to make stopping feel more possible – in fact, makes him even harder, and he feels the first twitch that tells him he’s close, he’s on the verge. That’s when Cecil’s hips suddenly halt and jerk, and the noise he makes is so goddamn raunchy Earl just can’t hold it together for another second.

“ _Fuck,_ Cecil,” he rasps, as the first orgasm he’s ever had in someone else’s company slams into him, pounding through his body and leaving him wrung out and spent, gasping. He collapses into the space between Cecil’s body and the sofa back. Cecil squirms to make space for him, the warm wet place on the front of his pants pressing into Earl’s thigh, and Earl becomes aware of the cooling wetness of his own jeans against his skin. It should be humiliating, but instead it is intimate and a little titillating. Earl nudges Cecil gently with his pelvis and Cecil hums tiredly, buries his face in the front of Earl’s shirt.

“Did that actually just happen?” Cecil asks, a few minutes later, and Earl feels his heart turn to lead. He doesn’t regret it, wants it to happen again, and think he might die if Cecil doesn’t feel the same way.

“Yeah, I think it did.”

Cecil snuggles closer. “Good.”


	4. Doubt

Earl wakes slowly the following morning, becoming aware only by degrees that he is naked, his arm slung around Cecil’s waist, Cecil’s body fitted neatly into the nook created by his. His heart lurches as full awareness settles over him. It seems unreal, impossible; and yet Cecil’s hair is indisputably tickling his nose, the slow flow of Cecil’s breathing is lifting and lowering his arm, Cecil’s bare skin is pressed hotly against his.

Making out on the sofa the evening before had felt natural enough; it was the sort of thing any teenagers might have done. Waking up together, naked, feels disconcertingly _adult,_ and the absence of Cecil’s family, particularly his mother, has never felt more staggering.

He raises his head slightly, peering at the alarm clock on Cecil’s bedside table, and winces. He has a half hour to get to work. 

It’s a kind of anguish to get out of bed, to peel himself gently away from Cecil’s warm, sleeping form. The parts of his body that were just touching Cecil feel cold as soon as he slides off the bed, and Cecil squirms deeper under the covers with a soft, sleepy sound of protest, looking so snug and warm and inviting, Earl almost dives back into bed with him, job be damned.

But no. He should go. He should find something to wear - his jeans from last night are out of the question, but Cecil has some hand-me-downs from his brother in a box in the closet - and wash his face and just...go. He definitely should _not_ turn back the covers to look at Cecil, shouldn’t even _think_ about kissing him awake. And yet somehow that’s exactly what he’s doing.

“Mmmmph...hey,” Cecil says, eyelids fluttering open, eyes swimming into focus. He smiles and kisses Earl back, and for a few seconds Earl forgets his job entirely, but then Cecil sits up. “What time is it?” he asks, rubbing at his eyes. “I have to go to the station.”

“Yeah, and I have to go to work.”

“Oh,” Cecil says, as he takes in Earl’s naked form. “ _Oh,_ ” he says again, eyes widening. 

Earl can feel the blood rising across his face. “I was hoping I could borrow something,” he says, gesturing toward the closet. “My jeans from last night…”

“Oh, right, sure,” Cecil says. “Of course.”

“Are you going to scouts tonight?” Earl calls from the closet as he rummages through the box of old clothes. 

Cecil doesn’t answer right away, and Earl pulls on a pair of only slightly too-large jeans and pokes his head out the closet door. “Cecil?”

“Leonard says I have to stay late tonight to help with the tape archive,” Cecil says. “He gave me an exemption for scouts.”

“An exemption? I didn’t know that was even a possibility. I thought you had to stick with it until…” Until what? Earl realizes he has no idea when one’s obligation to the Night Vale Boy Scouts ends. But surely there have been people who have left scouts before, haven’t there? “Until you...finished all the badges, or something.”

Cecil shrugs. “I don’t know, but Leonard says I need fewer distractions if I’m going to take this internship seriously, and I’m sure he knows what he’s talking about. And I really love working at the station. He said that if I keep up the good work, I might be able to help with sound editing soon! And did I tell you that I showed him that coffee technique you taught me? He said he could really taste the difference.”

Earl smiles to himself as he pulls on a shirt. “Good,” he says. “I’m glad it’s going well - I’ve always heard that internship can be a little dangerous.” He doesn’t notice the effect that his words have had on Cecil until the shirt is over his head and he’s shoved the hair out of his eyes. “Hey, what’s the matter?” 

Cecil’s face is ashen, his lower lip trembling. “What have you heard?” he asks. 

“The same things everyone else has,” Earl says calmly, although Cecil’s abrupt shift in demeanor is more than a little alarming. “Nothing specific, just that a lot of the interns don’t make it, for one reason or another. Why? Cecil, come on, you’re giving me the creeps.”

Cecil’s shoulders slump and he looks down at the floor. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I was thinking, it’s just…” he looks at the clock again, and sighs. “Maybe we can talk about it later. We’re both going to be late.”

“No way,” Earl says, sitting down on the edge of the bed and regarding Cecil seriously. “You seemed totally freaked. What just happened?”

Cecil meets Earl’s eyes briefly and looks away again. “It’s just...my mom. She started hiding right when I started my internship. And before that...there was this thing that happened - oh, it’s a long story, I’ll tell you later, okay? I just couldn’t help but wonder...but it’s silly, there can’t be a connection, can there?”

Earl’s mind is blazing around the word, “hiding,” and he opens his mouth to ask where on earth Cecil has gotten the idea that his mother - and possibly his whole family - has been _hiding_ all this time, but the look on Cecil’s face stops him. He just says, “Probably not,” and leans forward to kiss Cecil’s damp, sleep-rumpled cheek. “See you later?” 

“Yeah,” Cecil says absently, glancing over at the blanket-draped mirror over his bureau, then back at Earl with a fragile smile. “See you later.”

* * *

The doubts start later that day. 

He had spent the morning on autopilot, barely registering anything anyone said to him, trying to adjust to the radical change in his circumstances. The problem is that he doesn’t understand what his circumstances _are_. Is Cecil his boyfriend now? Had they had sex the night before, or was it something else? Is he still a virgin? Is he _living_ with Cecil, or just staying with him? What are they even doing?

And what about Cecil’s remark about his mother hiding from him? What did _that_ mean? Should he ask Cecil about it, or should he wait and see if Cecil brings it up again?

“Order up,” he says absently, tapping the bell and checking the ticket rail to make sure he got everything right. He slides the plates into the warming window and promptly submerges himself in his thoughts again, even as he sinks another wire mesh basket of frozen french fries into the oil cooker. 

“Thanks, hon,” says one of the servers, Sal, as she gathers plates from the warming window and piles them expertly on her tray. “Say...you okay? You look a little distracted.”

“Huh? No, I’m fine,” Earls says, busying himself with another plate, avoiding eye contact. 

“You don’t seem fine,” she says. “And I think you’re burning those fries.”

“What?” She’s right, the fries are browned well past doneness, and the oil is smoking. He hurriedly whips the basket out of the oil and hooks it onto the drip rack.

“So what’s going on?” Sal asks, giving him a speculative look. “Late night? Cute kid like you...I wouldn’t be surprised.”

He gives her a weak smile, dismayed by how transparent he must be. “Yeah, I guess it _was_ kind of a late night.”

“Lucky you,” she says. “Someone special?”

“Of course,” he replies instantly, then blushes. “I mean, yeah, he is. Very special. But...I don’t know. We’ve been friends for a long time, you know? I don’t want to mess it up.”

She eyes him speculatively. “Not to butt in where I’m not wanted, but if you were to ask my advice, I’d tell you this: you can’t cross the streams. You know what I’m saying? You can be friends, or you can date, but it’s two completely different things.”

Earl shrugs, like maybe her advice doesn’t really apply to his situation, but inside he’s clamoring for more insights. “You think so?”

“I _know_ so, Earl baby. And I’ll tell you another thing: it’s not that easy to switch back and forth. Have you talked it out with this person?” She glances over her shoulder in annoyance as one of the other servers calls out to her to hurry it up. “I’ll be there when I get there, honestly, do you think invisible hash browns cook themselves? It’s a process!”

Earl shrugs when she turns back to him. “We haven’t, not really. We haven’t really talked about a lot of stuff, lately. Things are a little weird, right now. Especially for him.”

Sal rolls her eyes and shoulders her tray in a fluid, easy motion. “Boys!” she says. “Well, look, all I know is nothing ever got worse because two people decided to talk it out. And now I’ve got tables, and you’ve got to burn some more fries.” She smiles and reaches through the window to chuck him under the chin. “Don’t worry, hon. Being a teenager is rough, but it’ll be over before you know it.” 

* * *


	5. See-Saw

The scout meeting is a dull one, disaster preparedness drills that Earl could do in his sleep. He runs out of the scout outpost, identifies a hidden bunker entrance in seconds, and spends the rest of the evening lying in the quiet, reinforced cement coolness, thinking about Cecil, trying not to think about Cecil. 

Earl’s heart starts pounding erratically when he turns down Cecil’s street a half hour later and sees a light on in the living room window, one hand presses to his chest involuntarily as if this might somehow calm his pulse’s frantic pace. _It’s just Cecil,_ he tells himself, _you’ve known him your whole life,_ but he hasn’t really, not like this. 

His mind, stuck in some kind of masochistic game of flash cards, creates uncomfortable juxtapositions of childhood memories and visceral recollections from the night before . He remembers himself and Cecil, both 6 years old, at the annual Children’s Fair. They had both gotten their faces painted, and had taken home strange, twisted balloon animals, made hurriedly before the living, hungry, feral animals escaped their makeshift enclosure and the fair was evacuated. Then he remembers the way Cecil’s mouth tasted last night; sweet, minty, with a faint counterpoint of alcohol and something that was uniquely Cecil. A thousand friendly wrestling matches, and the one that had ended with Cecil’s abrupt capitulation, his body going slack under Earl’s, the way he had slipped his legs apart, pulling Earl’s hips closer to his own, and...

But no, better not to think about that. When he comes to the cross street that leads to his mother’s house, he hesitates, considers going home and avoiding dealing with these complicated, contradictory feelings. But that would only prolong the uncertainty, and as panic-inducing as the thought of seeing Cecil is, the thought of _not_ seeing him is worse. 

He gets to Cecil’s front door, key in hand, and freezes. He can’t bring himself to open the door and walk inside, so he knocks, slipping his key back into his pocket. He hasn’t knocked since he started staying over, but it seems appropriate, somehow.

Cecil is slow to answer the door; his footsteps stop several seconds before he pulls the door open.

It’s only when he sees Cecil’s familiar face light up at the sight of him that he resumes breathing. “Oh, it’s you,” Cecil says, smiling and regarding him quizzically. “Why did you knock? Did you lose your key?”

“No, I just-” Earl stops, unable to find the words. “It just seemed like maybe I should. I don’t know.”

Cecil takes him by the hand and pulls him inside, closing the door behind him. “Earl, if you don’t -”

“I hope you don’t-”

“Because I-”

They laugh uneasily, and Cecil tilts his head in the direction of the living room. They sit facing one another on the sofa, not quite on opposite ends. Earl can practically feel the air filling with words, but he can’t seem to harness any of them. Mercifully, Cecil is up to the challenge.

“Do you remember when we were little, and we’d play on the see-saw at the playground behind Night Vale Elementary?”

“Sure,” Earl says, baffled by the apparent non-sequitur. 

“Remember how we’d try to balance it, so nobody was up and nobody was down, so we were both right in the middle?” Earl nods and Cecil looks down at his hands, which are plucking at the sofa’s worn upholstery. “That’s what this feels like,” he shrugged, inhaling deeply. “We’ve been friends forever, and I don’t want that to change...but I…”

“Me too,” Earl says softly. He remembers the feeling of Cecil’s naked body next to his, familiar and exotic at once. Several months of regular meals have pulled him back from the brink of starvation, and he’s no longer bony and undernourished. He’s still teenaged-slim, adding height faster than his breadth can catch up, but Earl’s hands remember smooth curves and planes of muscle, the warm softness of his skin. His throat goes dry and his heart has recommenced its pounding with a vengeance.

“We’ve added something new,” Cecil says. “And now we’re tipping all over the place. We just need to find our balance again.”

“How do we do that?” Earl asks, thinking about his talk with Sal earlier that day. “What if we can’t?”

Cecil stops pulling at the loose thread in the sofa cushion and looks up at him, as if the possibility of failure hadn’t occurred to him. “Is that what you think? That we can’t be friends anymore if we, um...do the other stuff, too?”

“I don’t know,” Earl says, meeting Cecil’s eyes, and suddenly he _does_ know, with a brilliant clarity, that they can’t. The way Cecil is looking at him, his eyes trailing lazily over Earl’s mouth, down his chest, to a place where Earl can feel his gaze as if it had become corporeal, has told him everything he needs to know. 

He takes Cecil’s hand in both of his. “You’re my best friend, Cecil,” he looks up at Cecil’s face and nearly loses it. “But this...whatever this is,” he gestures to himself and then to Cecil, at some invisible force that even now urges them together. He needs Cecil to understand that these two things won’t balance, _can’t_ balance. On the one side, their entire lives up to this point; on the other, something unknown, enormous, and frightening.

Earl opens his mouth to continue, but finds his mind blank. Suddenly, he knows the only way to explain it is to _show_ Cecil what he means. He leans forward and brushes his lips lightly against Cecil’s. For an instant, that fleeting contact is all there is, but then, like a spark starting a forest fire, it catches.

Cecil slides his hands up to clasp Earl’s face, Earl wraps his arms around Cecil’s waist and in seconds they close the little gap between themselves, Cecil half in Earl’s lap as the universe dwindles to the place where their mouths are joined. It isn’t anything like all the cliches Earl has heard. It’s not like a chemical reaction or a cosmic click or a kind of magic; it feels like lying on the beach when the tide starts to pull, the sand sucking away from underneath him, the water dragging his falling body away and away into an endless abyss. It feels like losing control, and that’s something he absolutely cannot afford to do. His hands tighten on Cecil’s shoulders, pulling him closer for a fraction of a second before pushing him firmly, almost violently, away.

“You see?” he gasps, panting. Cecil doesn’t respond, but nods slowly and silently. This attraction, with its attendant threats of strange new emotions and physical responses, is too much, too soon. 

“Do you want me to move back home?”

“No,” Cecil says quickly, reaching a hand out to Earl and pulling it back before making contact. “I think you should stay here, unless...do you _want_ to leave?”

“God, no,” Earl says. 

“Then you should stay. We’ll just...wait a little while, before we make any decisions.”

The idea of letting the events of the previous night settle, of seeing how their friendship has held up to this all-consuming sexual urge, sounds so reasonable that Earl doesn’t bother to consider whether or not it’s actually possible. “Right,” he says. “We’ll just...wait and see.”

They sit there, staring at one another for a long moment. “I’m probably going to need to sleep somewhere else, though,” Earl says, and the tension between them relents, just a little.


	6. Temptation

It’s not at all easy, but they stick to their decision over the next several months. The thing that makes it possible, Earl thinks, is that they see less of each other during their senior year of high school than they ever have at any point in the past.

Earl’s new work schedule eats almost all of his free time, and Cecil spends increasingly long stretches of time at the radio station. They see each other for a few hours most evenings, but they’re both so exhausted they hardly have time to talk before Cecil heads off to his room and Earl retires to Cecil’s brother’s old room. Once there, Earl can’t help but wonder if he’s made the wrong decision. He misses Cecil, longs for the reassuring warmth of his body as much as he longs for the effortless friendship of their shared childhood. They’ve stepped away from the precipice, but they’re still in unfamiliar territory. 

Earl is initially suspicious of Leonard Burton, who strikes him as a prickly old bastard, but the man seems to have taken a genuine liking to Cecil, and Cecil plainly adores him. The internship is going so well, and Cecil is on such an even keel, that Earl is surprised by his reaction when he tells him about his upcoming camping trip. 

“A week?”

“It’s the Radon Canyon Campout, it’s the biggest scouting event of the year.”

“You’re leaving me alone here for a whole week?”

“Cecil,” Earl chides him. “You’re hardly ever here anymore. You slept in the intern break room twice last week.”

Cecil shivers. “I won’t be doing that again,” he says. 

“Even so, you’ll still be at the station every night. You won’t even notice I’m gone.”

“I will,” Cecil says, seriously. “I’ll notice...but it’s fine. I’ll be fine.” Then, with an unconvincingly upbeat inflection, he added, “I’ll be fine.” Earl, who hasn’t been even a little worried about leaving Cecil by himself, is suddenly _very_ worried.

“What’s wrong, Cecil? You were here by yourself for…” Earl realizes he isn’t sure how long it was, “...for a while before I came to stay, right?” 

Cecil doesn’t reply, just looks down at his hands, then sighs and looks up again, affixing a smile to his face. “It’s fine. I’m sorry, I don’t know what I’m so worried about.” He waves his hand in the air, dismissing his fears, but Earl catches him glancing at the mirror over the dining room table nervously. He leans forward, resting his hand on Cecil’s shoulder. 

“Cecil, I haven’t wanted to ask - and you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but...why are all the mirrors covered? Is it something to do with-”

“No,” Cecil says, too quickly. “Or...yes...or maybe...oh, I really don’t know, it’s just that _she_ covered them, and I thought…” he leans his forearms on his knees, hanging his head, and he suddenly seems years older than he really is. “I guess I thought that if I kept them covered…” his voice tightens and he stops, inhaling unsteadily.

“She would come back,” Earl says. 

Cecil shakes his head slowly. “Never mind. I know you’re the Junior Assistant Scoutmaster. I know you have to be there - I’d go with you if I could get the time away from the station, but I just can’t. Leonard needs me.”

Earl doesn’t know what to say to that, to any of it, but he’s afraid of what might happen if he pushes Cecil any further. He also feels a little surge of gratitude toward Leonard Burton, for the simple act of finding Cecil indispensable. Earl knows all too well what a difference it makes, being necessary to someone. His voice sounds harsh and inadequate when he says, “I really will be back before you know it.” 

Cecil swallows and looks around the living room apprehensively, tries a smile. “It just won’t be the same without you here,” he says. 

* * * 

When Earl gets back from his trip, Cecil isn’t home. He’s still not there when Earl finishes cleaning and stowing his gear, and he’s still not there when Earl heads to bed with a book, exhausted and a little worried. He tries to read, to stay awake until Cecil gets home, but his vision blurs with weariness, and after six days of rugged hiking and sleeping rough in the wilderness, his body has its worn-out way with him, and pulls him down into sleep.

Earl isn’t sure how much later it is when he has the uncanny feeling of landing in bed from a great height, muscles twitching him awake in a state of panicked confusion. He hadn’t been aware of drifting off, but that’s clearly what happened. He sits up, heart hammering, shoving his hands through his hair. “Cecil?” he calls, hesitantly, but there’s no answer. He stands up, makes his way to his door, and listens for a moment. That’s when he hears the cry from down the hall. 

He runs down the hall and flings open the door to Cecil’s room. By some trick of the light, a dark, undulating shape seems to seep into the shadows as soon as the light from the hall lances through the blackness. Earl pauses for a few seconds to rub his eyes, but when he opens them again, there’s no indication of anything out of the ordinary. There is only Cecil, twisted in his sheets, tossing and turning in the grip of some nightmare. 

He hurries to the bed and leans over Cecil’s writhing form, lays a hand gently on his shoulder. As soon as his hand comes into contact with Cecil’s skin, Cecil jolts awake, eyes wide and staring, breath heaving in his chest. The moment he recognizes Earl, he practically sobs with relief and flings his arms around him.

“You’re back...you’re _back_ ,” he murmurs softly, as Earl recovers from his surprise and wraps his arms around Cecil’s trembling body. 

“”Oh, hey...shh, it’s okay,” Earl says, a little shakily. “I’m here, I’m back. I tried to wait up for you, but I guess...I just fell asleep.”

“I didn’t know you were home,” Cecil says, and Earl feels warmth radiating from the core of his being at the thought of this being his home now. 

“Well, I am,” Earl says. “Are you okay? It was funny, when I came in here, I thought I saw something, a dark shape, but I guess it was just a trick of the light. You completely freaked me out.”

Cecil stops trembling, goes completely still, and pulls away, looking up at Earl. “What did it look like?” he asks. 

Cecil’s voice has changed over the last year, not simply dropping into a lower register, but sinking toward the bottom of the ocean. The combination of the lateness of the hour and the dark, hypnotic tone of Cecil’s voice sends chills down Earl’s spine.

“I don’t know,” he says, smothering the memory of the amorphous shape, of long tendrils of blackness trailing from the absolute dark. “Just a shadow.” 

He pulls Cecil close again, rubs a hand in reassuring circles on his back, trying not to think about the fact that they’re in bed together, that Cecil’s partially naked body is clasped in his arms, that Cecil’s warm breath is tickling Earl’s chest. Earl stops breathing, and closes his eyes, as Cecil’s hands move in reciprocal circles down to the small of his back. Cecil’s body feels feverishly hot against his, and Earl is suddenly aware of him in a way he hasn’t been before, aware of the appealing shape of his shoulders and the graceful long muscles of his legs tangled with his own. He starts to feel warmer, as if his whole body were blushing, and he recalls one night under the stars in Radon Canyon when thoughts of Cecil had kept him up late into the night, until he had no choice but to take matters into his own hand.

He feels Cecil shift, the bed sinking a little beneath him. Earl can feel him, his face so close, and he know that if Cecil kisses him right now he will be lost. 

And then Cecil gasps, and the spell is abruptly broken.

“What is it?” Earl asks, looking over his shoulder. 

“The mirror,” Cecil says, eyes huge and shining in the dark. Earl can see, now, that the sheet covering the mirror over Cecil’s bureau has slipped down, exposing a sliver of silver brightness. He extricates himself from Cecil’s grasp and approaches it.

“Don’t look into it,” Cecil whispers. “Earl, be careful, and _don’t look._ ” 

Earl’s veins fill with ice as he moves closer, eyes downcast, but his curiosity is piqued and even his sense of dread isn’t enough to make him stop. “Why not?” he asks, moving closer, lifting his eyes to see just the slightest flash of something he couldn’t...quite…

Before he can take another step, Cecil is next to him, staying him with a hand on his arm, and within seconds he has thrown the sheet back over the mirror, covering it completely. 

Earl stands still for a moment, suddenly tempted to whip the sheet away and finally reveal whatever it is the fabric is concealing, but Cecil tugs on his arm and he subsides again onto the bed. 

“What would I have seen?” he asks. “Cecil, what did _you_ see, when you looked?”

“My reflection,” Cecil says quietly. “And something else, I think.”

“Something else? Was that what frightened you?”

Cecil doesn’t answer for a long time, but he finally says, “No.”

“Then...Cecil, what did?”

“That it might not have been something else at all,” Cecil answers, his voice hollow and strange. Earl doesn’t have the heart to ask anything else after that, not even if Cecil wants him to stay, so he does stay, curling his body around Cecil’s until the other boy falls asleep, and lying awake into the night.


	7. Form 486

“What comes after Junior Assistant Scoutmaster?” Cecil asks one morning over breakfast.

“It depends, “ Earl says, flipping a page of the Daily Journal and glancing up at Cecil, “How come?”

“I was just wondering whether you were going to keep up with the scouts after graduation next week,” Cecil says. “And if you did, if you’d keep moving up the ranks, or if...wait, are you blushing? Why are you blushing?”

Earl sets down his coffee cup, face burning. “I...oh, never mind.”

“Earl?” Cecil asks, setting down his spoon. “What is it? What happened?”

“I got moved up to Assistant Scoutmaster,” he blurts, hurrying his words as if they might not get out if he doesn’t rush them. “I had already completed all the necessary exams and chants, and I successfully performed the final blood rites while we were at Radon Canyon.”

“And you didn’t _tell_ me?”

“It’s just...it’s really not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal? Earl, it’s wonderful!” He leaps out of his chair, knocking it down in his enthusiasm, and sweeps Earl into a huge hug. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me! Do you remember when we first received our scarlet envelopes, summoning us to the scout tents behind the Ralph’s? Everyone else was crying or upset, and you were...well, you were the only one of us who was actually _excited._ ”

“You seemed happy enough,” Earl protests. “You weren’t upset.”

“Yes, but only because _you_ made it seem like so much fun,” Cecil says. “You kept talking about the campouts and the merit badges...and then, after the very first meeting, you said ‘Cecil, one day I’m going to take over as Scoutmaster.’ And now, here you are!”

“It’s only _Assistant_ Scoutmaster,” Earl demurs, but Cecil’s ebullience isn’t diminished in the slightest by this distinction. 

“You can downplay it as much as you want, but you can’t stop me from making a huge fuss about it. We should do something special, have a party or something. Oh! That reminds me - have you filled out this Form 486 or whatever it is?” He rifles through a stack of papers on the counter, withdraws a stapled stack of official paperwork, his mood dimming. “It’s for the graduation party. I guess we need to have it signed by a parent or guardian, but…” he shrugs and glances around the kitchen, a simple gesture encompassing the mysterious disappearance of his family and their failure to reappear. “I wonder if Leonard could sign it for me. Do you…” he trails off when he sees Earl’s face. “What?”

Earl flips through the pages of the form, a chasm of helplessness opening inside him. “I didn’t get this,” he says. “I didn’t get this form.”

“Sure you did. Everyone does. They’re mailed out a week before...graduation. Oh.” His shoulders slump. “So it was mailed to your old address,” he concludes.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance someone filled it out and sent it back on their own?”

Earl laughs, but it sounds more like coughing, there’s so little humor in it. “My mom doesn’t know what classes I’m taking, or if I’m in school at all. She couldn’t answer any of these questions. For fuck’s sake, she forgot my birthday. She might have forgotten about me completely by now.”

“I really don’t see how anyone could possibly do that,” Cecil says quietly, placing his hand on top of Earl’s on the pile of paperwork. 

Earl doesn’t speak for a long time, and Cecil doesn’t either. Earl’s mind begins the necessary calculations of his odds of finding the Form 486, of finding his mother in the right mood and Bill out of the house, of persuading his mother to sign it. It’s not impossible, but it’s risky, and it will be deeply unpleasant. He considers what might happen to him if he just doesn’t submit the form and fails to graduate, but it doesn’t bear contemplating. Everything he’s planned - his future with the scout troop, his admission to NVCC, is all conditioned upon this single accomplishment. It’s the last gate he must pass through to obtain his final, permanent independence from the misery that is his sole, inadequate parent. He has to go home.

“All right,” Cecil says, before Earl can speak. “We’ll go to your house and we’ll find it and we’ll get it signed.”

“Cecil, no. It’s...better if I go by myself.”

Cecil regards him skeptically. “I don’t think so,” he says. “You should see what you look like right now, like someone who forgot about Vector H. I’m going with you, and we’re getting the paperwork, you’re graduating, and you’re going to this party.” 

Earl blinks at him, and despite himself, starts to feel a little optimistic. “When do you want to go?” he asks.

“Why wait?” Cecil says. “Let’s go right now.”

* * *

It takes them less than ten minutes to walk to Earl’s mother’s house. They find uncollected mail packed into the mailbox, and somewhere near the back, Earl discovers the envelope from Night Vale High and withdraws the Form 486. 

“That was easy,” Cecil says. “Now we just need to get it signed.”

“Yeah,” Earl says, studying the outside of the house for clues as to the presence or absence of its occupants, but there is no clear sign of who might be inside. "That part won't be so easy."

Cecil glances at him worriedly as they make their way up the walk toward the front door. "Do you want me to do it?" he asks, and Earl feels something in his chest shift at the thought that Cecil would even offer. _He wouldn't if he knew what it would be like,_ he thinks. He shakes his head, squeezing Cecil's arm. 

“Maybe we should try tomorrow,” Earl whispers as they creak the storm door open and the sound of the television cackles down the front hall. He points to the shoes just inside the door, a pair of large men's work boots. It doesn't necessarily mean Bill is there, but under normal circumstances it would be enough to send him packing.

“No,” Cecil says, propping the door on his shoulder and regarding Earl seriously. “This is it, it’s the very last thing you need from them. This one. Last. Thing.” Earl stares at him, rapt, as his doubts are once more dispelled. 

“Just...let me go in by myself, okay? It’s enough, just knowing that you’re here. And if...if I need you, you’ll be right outside. If something happens, you could…”

Cecil’s expression darkens. “Is something likely to happen?” he asks.

Earl can feel how tremulous his smile is, and he inhales deeply to steady himself. “It depends,” he says. “If it’s just my mom, it should be all right.”

Cecil obviously doesn’t like it, but he nods, and Earl follows the television noise and fug of cigarette smoke to the family room. He stops, staring into the room, at the two figures on the sofa. “Oh, shit,” he whispers.

The next several seconds are a blur of sound and motion, his mother yelling first at him, then at Bill, who is off the sofa and in the kitchen, hands fisted in Earl’s shirt, in seconds flat. His red, watery eyes burn into Earl’s and he shakes him, breathing hard, beery breaths into Earl’s face.

“You’ve got a hell of a nerve,” he says. “You’d better have the goddamn money you owe your mom!”

“Wh-what?” Earl asks, struggling to free himself from the man’s grasp. Earl is already taller than Bill, but is barely half his mass, and Bill bends him back against the counter, shoving his forearm into Earl’s windpipe. 

“Don’t fuck with me, you little snot. Where’s the fucking money?”

“I d-don’t -”

“Earl, just give it to him,” his mother wails from the living room. “Just give him whatever you’ve got and get out of here!”

In the midst of this chaos, a calm voice intrudes. “That isn’t what is going to happen,” Cecil says. 

Bill glances over his shoulder and snorts, glances down at Earl. “Tell your boyfriend to get the hell out of here unless he wants to get his ass kicked,” he says, leaning hard into Earl’s ribcage to quell his struggles. 

“Cecil, just go,” Earl half-chokes, but Cecil shakes his head. 

“No. We came here to get Earl’s graduation forms signed, and we’re not leaving until it’s done.” He picks up the papers from the kitchen floor.

Bill releases the front of Earl’s shirt and turns to look at Cecil in disbelief. “No? You’re not leaving? Kid, you can take your damn paperwork and-”

“No,” Cecil says again, quietly. “You’re not _listening_. That isn’t how this is going to go.”

Bill opens his mouth but no words come out, and Earl sees his mother subside slowly back into her seat, staring at Cecil. It feels like all the air has been sucked from the room, like someone has paused the action. And Cecil seems completely different, older, his voice hypnotically compelling, and they're all hanging on his every word.

“All we need,” Cecil continues, his voice cool, clipped, and resonant in the confined space, “Is for you to sign this form, Miz Harlan. Earl doesn’t have any money, and he doesn’t owe you anything. No one is kicking anyone else’s ass. The only thing that is happening is you...signing...this...form.” He picks up the form and moves toward the sofa, holding out the stapled sheets, and Earl watches in confusion as his mother reaches up with a trembling hand and takes it. Cecil hands her a pen and folds back the sheets to the last page. Slowly, and shakily, she signs the form.

“Thank you,” Cecil says, collecting the form and tucking it under one arm. “Come on, Earl, let’s go,” Cecil says, moving around Bill’s still-inert body and taking Earl by the hand.

“Earl! Don’t!” his mother says, her voice strained, as if she had to break through some barrier to call after him.

“Bye, Mom,” he says. “Try to take care of yourself.”

She gasps in shock as if he has just struck her, and stands up, following them down the hall. “Ungrateful,” she hisses after him. “After all I did for you, for you to walk out of here without so much as a thank you for the _years_ of free room and board! I should have turned tail and run the moment I saw your father! If I had the slightest idea where that redheaded sonofabitch went-”

Earl pauses at the door and turns, looking at his mother one final time. “It doesn’t have to be this hard,” he says. “You could leave, go live somewhere else, and it would be so much better, Mama.”

She stops her forward momentum and her look of shock turns to one of disgust. “If you think this is hard,” she says, shaking her head. “You’d better hope you never grow up.”

Her words are lost in the clatter of the storm door and the pounding of his feet on the concrete sidewalk, and then he’s free, he’s done with it, and he laughs with sheer relief. He looks down at his hand, still held in Cecil’s, and lifts it to his lips without thinking about it. 

“That was amazing,” he says, pausing to kiss Cecil’s hand lightly before letting it go. “How did you do that? What even _was_ that? I’ve never seen - or heard, I guess - you do anything like that before.”

“I don’t know,” Cecil says, with a shaky laugh. “When I saw him drag you across the kitchen, I just...I had to do _something_ , I couldn’t just stand there. And I thought if I could just make them listen…”

“It worked,” Earl says, unable to disguise his awe. “I...I don’t know what to say, Cecil.”

“Don’t say anything,” Cecil says, taking Earl’s hand again. “You don’t have to say anything at all.”


	8. Graduation

The following morning, Earl wakes up to the sound of the burbling machinations of the coffeemaker, and rolls over, groaning with tiredness. He had gotten home from work after midnight. Cecil had already been asleep, to Earl’s relief. After the initial shock of the encounter at his mother’s house had worn off, he had been mortified, and couldn’t bring himself to face Cecil, not yet. He pulls the covers over his head and waits, hoping Cecil will just leave, but a few minutes later he hears a light knock at his door.

”Earl? You up?”

“Yeah, almost,” Earl answers.

“Just checking. I wasn’t sure if you had overslept.”

“No, I’m up. I’m good.”

“Okay. You want me to wait, or…?”

“No, you go ahead. I’ll see you at school,” he says, waiting until he hears the door close before he emerges from beneath the covers. 

But he doesn’t see Cecil at school, because he goes out of his way to avoid him. He heads directly to work after his last class and volunteers to stay late, to make sure Cecil will be asleep before he gets home again. He feels guilty, and mean-spirited, and small, but he does it anyway.

When he finally gets home, he sees that Cecil hasn’t gone to bed, as he had hoped. The light in the living room is on, and Cecil is curled on the sofa, looking as if he just woke up, hair mussed, eyes a little puffy. As he comes closer, though, Earl realizes his mistake. Cecil hasn’t been asleep, he’s been crying, and concern immediately overrides his stupid embarrassment. He rushes to Cecil’s side.

“What is it? What’s the matter?”

“Th-this,” Cecil manages, pushing a folded letter into Earl’s hands. “My - m-my…” but he can’t continue; his face crumples and he buries his face in Earl’s shoulder, sobbing.

Holding Cecil’s shaking body against his chest makes it impossible to keep the letter still enough to read, but Cecil’s hiccupping breaths calm after a while, and Earl opens the letter with one hand. It’s from the Night Vale Housing Authority, and Cecil’s address is printed across the top, with his mother’s name in a box labeled “Property Owner.”

_NOTICE:_

_The Night Vale Housing Authority regrets to inform you that the above-referenced address is being reallocated. The justification codes for this decision are listed below. If you are an occupant at this residence, please vacate the premises within 30 days. Failure to comply will result in forcible ejection and sale of any and all contents at auction. Objections may be filed at NVHA headquarters, Suite 237, Room 6. Please reference your address and case number, which are listed at the top of this form. All objections are considered carefully, and will result in reeducation. Thank you for your compliance,_

_Sincerely,_

_Donna Uebersax, Housing Specialist_

_Justification Codes: 2, 3, 9, 11_

Earl flips the notice over and searches the list of justification codes, but stops as soon as he reads the explanation for Code 2: _Property owner deceased._

He lets the letter drop and wraps both arms around Cecil, who clings to him as if his life depends on it. 

“Hey,” he says, after a few minutes have passed. “Come on, come with me.” He helps Cecil to his feet and half-carries him to his room. Cecil flops onto the bed, numb and affectless and still fully dressed. Earl removes his sneakers, pulls him upright to take off his jacket. “Come on, Cecil,” he says, trying to work Cecil’s arm out of its sleeve. “Help me get this off.”

“Why?” Cecil asks. “It won’t make anything better. It won’t make me feel better. It won’t change anything.” 

“I know, but it will make _me_ feel better. Like I’m doing something useful. Could you help me out here?”

Cecil turns his wide, red-rimmed eyes on Earl. After a moment, he nods and sits up, shucking off his jacket. Earl takes it and Cecil’s shoes and starts toward the door, but Cecil holds out one hand to stop him.

“Please...stay,” he says. “I...I really don’t want to be alone.”

“Sure, okay,” Earl says, shame flooding him as if it had been injected into his bloodstream. He had avoided Cecil all day because he couldn’t handle someone else knowing about his humiliatingly awful home life. His pettiness resulted in Cecil being alone at the worst possible time, and he feels empty inside, unable to see how he can ever repay his friend for his failure. 

He sits down on the bed, and Cecil lays down again. Earl can’t think of what to say or do, so he just rubs Cecil’s back in wide circles, hoping the repetitive, gentle motion will soothe him to sleep, and after a while, it does.

Cecil wakes up only once, with a gasp and a stifled sob, and Earl drifts briefly back to consciousness, pulling Cecil into the curve of his body, sliding his hand up and down Cecil’s arm. He inhales and smells Cecil’s familiar smell, feels Cecil’s hand wrap around his and press into his chest.

He almost says, “It’s okay,” but stops himself in time. He thinks for a moment, says instead, “I’ve got you,” and drifts off again, hugging Cecil close.

* * *

The next few days are the emotional equivalent of Night Vale’s windy season, which blows in all kinds of unpredictable weather. Cecil is fine one minute, in tears the next, enduring storms of grief that appear and disappear without warning, but by the last day of school, he appears to be faring better.

“Are you sure you still want to go?” Earl asks, as he finishes washing their breakfast dishes that morning. 

“It’s mandatory,” Cecil says, with a shrug.

“Still, I’m sure there’s some way…” Earl begins, but then he pauses. “Actually, I’ve never heard of anyone being allowed to miss it. But that doesn’t mean you couldn’t.”

“Are you coming back here after class?” Cecil asks, his voice artificially chipper.

Earl raises his eyebrows at the sudden change of subject, but he’s not going to push it if Cecil doesn’t want to talk about it. “After scouts,” he says, gesturing to his uniform. “I’ll need to change.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” Cecil disappears briefly into his room, emerges with a large plastic garment bag. “I thought you might like this. And I think it will fit.” He eyes Earl speculatively as he lays the bag over the back of the sofa.

“Thanks,” Earl says, studying the bag uncertainly. “Is that what you’re wearing?” Cecil’s outfit, an eye-searing ensemble that includes plaid, stripes and polka-dots, shouldn’t have been flattering on anyone, but Cecil is pulling it off.

“Yes, do you like it?”

“It’s very you.”

“I should hope so." He collects his bookbag and turns toward the door. "See you there?”

“See you there.”

* * *

The suit Cecil has left for him does fit perfectly, and when he pulls back the covering of one of the mirrors, he decides the colors - pale violet and dark plum - are either perfect, or an abysmal affront to his autumnal coloring. With a shrug, he carefully covers the mirror again before heading back to Night Vale High for the last time.

The annual Night Vale High graduation party is a notoriously volatile event. At 7pm sharp, the entire graduating class is required to be inside the gymnasium, and at 7:30, the doors are barricaded from the outside. The party is completely unchaperoned, a nod to the fact that Night Vale High’s graduates are now responsible adults, and the barricades are not removed - the people inside the gymnasium are tasked with finding their way out before sunrise. 

The most common means of egress is bashing out the windows with chairs, but some classes are more innovative than others. The legendary class of 1975, for example, fashioned a battering ram from sports gear and bashed through one of the barricaded doors. Another popular bit of school mythology tells of a class that dug a tunnel and escaped through an abandoned storm drain. Rumors abound about the secret tunnel entrance, which was never discovered. Some classes employ explosives, despite the high casualty rate. However they manage to escape, the soon-to-be former students enter the gymnasium as schoolchildren, and emerge as legal adult citizens of Night Vale.

The delirious atmosphere in the gym is almost palpable; overworked teenagers, finally, ecstatically free of classes, tests, applications and extracurricular obligations, seeming to drench the atmosphere with hormones. A band on a makeshift stage is playing festive dirges at an ear-splitting volume, and hundreds of graduates bob up and down, waltz, or mosh in a huge circle around the stage.

Earl arrives at 6:59 and takes a seat on the bleachers as several of his classmates refill empty orange milk cartons with what appears to be grain alcohol. One of the boys holds one up in Earl’s direction. “Harlan?” he asks. Earl shrugs and accepts the cartion and downs its contents before making a circuit of the room in search of Cecil. 

The pungent tang of alcohol spreads across the gymnasium like a fog, and the din of laughter and excitement ratchets up several notches, as if the entire room has become intoxicated at once. It makes it harder to wade through the sea of teenagers, but finally, Earl recognizes one of Cecil’s classmates from AP Armed Insurrection and waves her down. “Have you seen Cecil?” he asks, half-shouting over the din of music and voices.

“Yeah, I just saw him over there,” she says, pointing. “He was looking for you.”

“He was?”

“Yeah,” she says, shrugging and pointing vaguely into the crowd. Earl wades in, but the crowd of milling bodies slows him down, blocks his view. He emerges on the other side, but Cecil isn’t there. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he catches a glimpse of something - a flash of brightly-colored plaid fabric, and he follows it. Finally, he shoulders his way past a group of teenagers trying to mosh to the dirge and there is Cecil. Earl’s heart turns a somersault and he can’t seem to catch his breath all of a sudden.

“Hey,” he manages.

“Hey,” Cecil says, his face brightening. “I was looking for you. I was-” one of the moshers bumps into him and he steps close, jostling into Earl, who catches him around the waist to keep him from colliding with any of the other dancers. 

“Oh,” Cecil says, startled.

“Sorry,” Earl mumbles, pulling his arm away, but Cecil scoots a little closer, wrapping his own arms around Earl’s neck. Earl can feel himself blushing, but he leaves his arm where it is, curled around Cecil’s waist. 

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” Earl said. “Are you okay? What’s…? Oh.” He can smell the alcohol as Cecil sways a little in the circle of his arm. “Have you been drinking the orange milk?”

“Mm-hm.”

“How much?” Earl asked, struggling to keep Cecil on his feet.

“I don’t know...a lot? A lot. Definitely.”

“You know it’s not actually orange milk, right?”

“Of course.”

“Then why-” but he doesn’t have time to finish, because suddenly Cecil is kissing him, not just with his lips, but with his whole body, his arms tightening around Earl’s shoulders, one leg insinuating itself between his, nudging their hips together for emphasis, and Earl forgets his question completely.

Some of the people standing nearby whistle, or catcall, and there’s at least one “Get a room,” but Earl can only hear his blood pounding, the rush of Cecil’s breath as they reposition and kiss again.

Earl just has time to register how nice it is before his brain kicks in and reminds him how _wrong_ it is.

“Wait - no, stop.” He catches Cecil’s roaming hands, shoves them away. “We can’t, you’re drunk.”

“I’m not _that_ drunk. And besides, so are you.”

“No I’m not - not really - and besides, it doesn’t matter,” Earl replies bleakly. He shoves a hand through his hair, trying to pull himself together. His skin feels too tight, and the heat of the room is getting to him. He loosens his collar. “I thought we weren’t - you know. I thought we were just…” he trails off, because the expression on Cecil’s face is devastating.

“Earl,” he says hoarsely, leaning in, his lips brushing lightly against Earl’s ear. “I just want to feel something _else_ right now. I want…” he slides one hand down the front of Earl’s body. “I don’t want to just be sad anymore, I need to feel something else, _please_...” It’s like his words have pulled a plug in Earl’s brain, causing all his coherent thoughts to drain away, and emotions flood in to fill the space. Foremost among them, for some reason, is anger, directionless and fierce, tightening his jaw and tensing his shoulders. The crowd is growing and Cecil staggers again as another student bumps into him. “I think I need to...could we find a place to sit down for a minute?” Another caress along Earl’s chest.

There’s no place to sit anywhere in sight. Earl gets a firmer grip on Cecil’s waist and they push their way through the crowd until they come to the double doors that lead into the hall.

The locker-lined hallway offers no respite, although it feels good just to escape the heat and the thumping clamor of the gym. They walk past several couples making out in the niches between banks of lockers. Finally, Earl pushes open the door to the boys’ locker room and steers Cecil away from the sinks and mirrors, into a shower stall, and closes the door behind them. Earl lowers them both down onto the tiled bench. The cool, dark space smells, not unpleasantly, of lemon-scented cleaner, and the only light glows from the red “Exit” sign over the door. 

“Please, _please_ tell me you’re not going to throw up.”

“Hm? Oh, no, I think I’ll be okay in a minute.” But he’s swaying a little, and Earl clamps his hand around Cecil’s arm to keep him from toppling over. He’s still angry, nearly furious, and he can’t quite put his finger on why. Cecil rests his head on Earl’s shoulder, but Earls shrugs it off in irritation.

“Are you… _mad_ at me?” Cecil asks.

Earl turns to him, and his anger sharpens, turns into something else, something that’s anger and love and need and too many other things to name. He’s no longer thinking when he leans forward, pulls Cecil roughly against his body, and kisses him, hard. He feels Cecil’s body tighten briefly in surprise, then relax as he gives in to the demanding pressure of Earl’s mouth.

The whole world narrows to a single point of contact, the place where his mouth touches Cecil’s, and Earl feels his body adjusting to these unsettling new circumstances, rushing blood to new places, his brain going fuzzy as its resources are redeployed elsewhere. He slides a hand into Cecil’s hair, pulls him closer, deepening the kiss, and there is nothing but this; the tightening together of their lanky limbs, the urgency of lips, hips, and hands, and all of it building toward something different than what has happened between them before.

He doesn’t know how they come to be standing, as they kiss and tear frantically at one another’s clothing, how his hands manage to find their way under Cecil’s half-unbuttoned shirt, how Cecil’s leg came to be hitched around his hip, pulling them together tightly. He takes hold of Cecil’s thigh and grinds into him, and Cecil cries out, a rough-edged sound that sends shivers through Earl’s body.

Cecil’s hand slides down, to the waistband of his pants, flirting with the edge for a few seconds before slipping inside and rubbing coaxingly against him. No one has ever touched him like this, and it's shocking, so pleasurable it's almost painful. He inhales sharply, stifling a moan. 

"Cecil, if you keep doing that -,” he gasps, almost doubling over, but he doesn’t really want Cecil to stop, because it feels fucking incredible.

“I could always find something else to do,” Cecil says, fingers working at his fly. Earl’s mouth goes dry as he watches Cecil push his clothing out of the way and drop to his knees in front of him. He should do something, say something, to stop this, but he can't, the current is too swift to swim against.

Cecil sighs as he presses his lips to the place where thigh meets hip, and slides his hands around to Earl’s backside. The feeling of Cecil’s hands – and oh, _god,_ his mouth – on his bare flesh is almost more than Earl can take, and he grabs hold of the aluminum handrail, closing his eyes. 

He feels Cecil’s mouth, hot and wet, slide down his length, and he sees stars.

He sinks his free hand into Cecil’s hair, and Cecil covers it with his own, holding it in place. Earl tries to be gentle, but it is increasingly obvious that gentleness is not what Cecil wants. His hand flexes against Cecil’s scalp, tugging, and Cecil breaks away and gasps “Yes, _yes,_ like _that,_ ” before plunging Earl’s cock all the way to the back of his throat and hollowing his cheeks.

Confused and aroused well beyond the point where it’s easy to stop, Earl tries not to move his hips, to stay still, but the thrilling glide of Cecil’s tongue along the underside of his cock could undo every good intention he has ever had. 

“Oh _god_ Cecil it’s so good,” he whispers, and finally, unable to help himself, he moves against the sweet pressure of Cecil’s mouth, and Cecil tugs on his hips, encouraging the motion.

Earl hesitates; what Cecil wants seems degrading, disrespectful, but Cecil is undeniably _requesting_ this treatment. He uses both hands, gripping Cecil's hair, and pushes Cecil against himself forcefully, as if he were – oh, he doesn’t want to even think it, but it is undeniably like he is _using_ Cecil, ruthlessly, for his own pleasure. It should feel wrong, he shouldn’t want this, but it doesn’t and he does. He _does._ And the sounds Cecil is making, moaning, humming, whimpering, only make him want it more.

The sight and feel of all of this is too much, too unfamiliar and surprising to cope with. Earl closes his eyes again, but he can still hear the sounds Cecil makes, and he can _feel_ them, too, vibrating directly into his nerves. He releases Cecil's head, he feels too unsteady, and he flails out with one hand, searching for the handrail.

”S-so good, _so close_ , Cecil, I’m close, I’m gonna-”

He expects Cecil to release him but he doesn’t, he takes Earl even deeper, and the orgasm is hard, poignant and gutting as it rips through him. His fingers tighten on the handrail as he slowly comes back to his senses, shaking in the aftermath.

Cecil pulls away, spits a little, rubs the back of his hand across his mouth. Earl hauls him to his feet, hugs him hard against his body, cradling his head, burying his face against Cecil’s neck. Then he turns Cecil, shoves him forward so his hands are against the tiled shower wall. He makes short work of Cecil’s belt and fly and circles his thumb around the head of his erection, making Cecil groan ecstatically. He comes up close behind Cecil, hips against his ass, and thrusts against him as his hand works, doesn’t care how obscene it is, doesn’t care if he’s maybe being too rough. Cecil’s head drops forward and he rocks back against Earl, panting with exertion, his breaths loud in the small, echoing space.

”Earl...yes, more, yes, _yes_ ,” Cecil whispers, and then he starts to tremble and his words turn into incoherent, urgent sounds as he pulses in Earl’s hand, a familiar dance set to a slightly off-kilter rhythm.

Earl pushes himself back, away from Cecil, and sinks down on the little tiled bench, exhausted. Cecil joins him, puts an arm around him, and he leans into Cecil’s body, lets his head drop onto Cecil’s shoulder. Cecil strokes his hair soothingly, so softly that Earl doesn’t even feel it for several seconds. “It’s okay,” Cecil whispers. “It’s okay.”


	9. Lethe/Hypnos

There’s only a little time for awkwardness afterward. Earl clings to Cecil, his face buried against his shoulder, wondering how he’ll ever untangle his jumbled feelings, for less than two minutes. Then, suddenly, Cecil gasps and goes still in his arms.

“What is it?” he asks.

Cecil is in a state of splendid disarray, his shirt half undone, hair tousled, tie loose. He’d look ravishing if it weren’t for the blank look of shock on his face. He tilts his head to one side. “Is that...is that the Night Vale High School fight song?”

Earl listens. “Yeah. They always sing it at the graduation party, what’s the...big...” he stops talking as Cecil’s face goes so pale Earl think he might faint, and puts out a hand to steady him.

Cecil’s eyes widen in his ashen face and he cowers on the narrow little bench, scrambling away from the shower door. “I can’t go out there,” he whispers, his voice tight with fear. “Earl, I can’t, I can’t go out there, please don’t ask me to.”

“Hey, that’s fine, we don’t have to do anything right now,” Earl says. “We can stay here as long as you want.” 

Cecil is practically frantic, pulling his knees up to his chest and knocking into the shower handle in an effort to push himself further into the corner. 

“Cecil, don’t-” Earl says, reaching for the handle and cringing slightly against the anticipated spray of water, but it doesn’t come.

Instead, there is a deep, groaning creak and the wall of the shower swings backward, exposing a sliver of dank darkness beyond. They both stare at the opening in shock.

A shower of dust and plaster crumbles from the top of the door where it has scraped against the ceiling, but nothing else happens. They look at each other, then back at the secret door.

Earl quickly and absently puts his clothes more or less to rights, handing Cecil his jacket from the floor. Then, he places his hand on the shower handle and cranks it the rest of the way over. The hidden door opens completely, displacing another cloud of dust into the shower stall and revealing an oval of blackness. A faint smell of dampness and rot slowly fills the narrow shower stall.

“Is it the tunnel?” Earl asks, amazed. The tunnel has been the subject of unfulfilled speculation for so long it seems impossible that it could exist. 

“The tunnel?” Cecil asks. “I didn’t think it was actually real. I mean, an entire class digging a secret escape tunnel before the graduation party is believable, but how could everyone keep it a secret? It seems impossible.”

“I don’t know,” Earl says, peering into the dark opening. “Look here.” He points to a line of mysterious symbols, runic and obscure, carved into one wall. “Do you know what any of these mean?”

“No,” Cecil says, placing one finger next to one of them and tracing its shape. “Instructions? A warning?”

Earl touches one of them and feels a slight shock, as if the etched stone carried a very weak current. He draws his hand away. 

“Should we tell everyone else?” Earl asks. 

The faint strains of the fight song still trail down the hall from the gymnasium, and then Earl notices something, a breath of smoke and gunpowder in the air. He glances behind them, over the shower door, and sees coiling smoke rising toward the exit sign, lit pink by its dull red glow.

“Looks like they’ve already arrived at a solution,” Cecil says. “And besides, if this really _is_ the tunnel...it doesn’t feel right to tell everyone about it. It’s been secret all this time.”

“And you think it should stay secret?”

“If anyone in a position of authority were to find out about it, they’d probably fill it back in or something. I think it would be nice to leave it open for future students, don’t you?”

“But nobody ever uses the showers, how would they even find it?”

“Maybe the same way we did,” Cecil says, smiling as he slips into the dark entryway.

Earl reflects on that, decides it seems a little unfair, but then a thunderous booming sounds from the direction of the gym, and he figures the rest of the class is on the verge of their own escape anyway. He steps into the tunnel after Cecil. The floor is slick, damp rock, the air moist and cool. Somewhere inside, water drips with a slow, steady _plock-plock-plock_ , echoing against the stone walls.

“Are you sure we should-” Earl starts to ask, as the hidden door grinds shut behind him, and they are swallowed in darkness.

* * *

Earl steps through the front door, Cecil’s hand held lightly in his, with no memory of how he got there. He drops Cecil’s hand as if it were a hot coal.

“What just happened?” He asks, dismayed to hear his voice quavering.

Cecil turns to look at him, the motion unnaturally slow, almost dreamlike. He doesn’t answer. The hallway is dark and Earl can’t see Cecil’s eyes clearly. They look _wrong,_ the black of pupils and faint gleam of light mixed up, not responding to the light and dimness the way they should. Earl forces himself to take Cecil’s hand again - cold and dry - and pulls him down the hall toward the bedroom, flicks on the bedside lamp.

“Cecil? Are you okay?” he takes him by the shoulders and shakes him gently. “Cecil? Cecil!”

“Hmm?” Cecil seems to wake up, and when his eyes meet Earl’s, he can see that they’re perfectly normal. Cecil smiles, sliding his arms around Earl’s waist. “What’s the matter?”

Earl stares at him, uncertain. “I - we - I…” he stops, takes a deep breath. “How did we get home?”

“We walked, silly,” Cecil says. 

“But...how did we get out of the gym?”

“The same way everyone else did,” Cecil replies. “Are you okay? You look a little upset.” He reaches out a hand, smoothing Earl’s perpetually unruly cowlick and straightening his collar.

“Upset? No, I just…” He tries to remember what was bothering him, but the memories shrink away from his questing mind. “The same way everyone else did,” he repeats woodenly. His memory supplies the smell of gunpowder, licks of smoke in the glow of a red exit light, and distant booming sounds. “Explosives?” he hazards.

“I’m sure that was it,” Cecil says. “You know how it is when people get out the dynamite. Did you hit your head, maybe?” He cradles the back of Earl’s head and looks directly into his eyes. 

Earl blushes, hard, as a memory flickers across his brain. His hands locked against Cecil’s scalp, Cecil’s mouth on him, and it’s like it’s happening _right now,_ the recollection is so intense it sends a jolt straight to his core.

“You’re blushing,” Cecil says, touching a cool hand to Earl’s burning cheek. 

“I was just thinking about…” Earl pauses. Had that been a memory? A fantasy? He tries to summon it again but it resists closer examination. 

“Thinking about what?” Cecil asks, leaning in close. His lips are close to Earl’s, almost touching. 

“About you.”

“About me doing something that made you blush?”

Earl blushes harder. It should have been impossible. 

Cecil hooks a finger over the waistband of Earl’s pants and pulls him close as he sits down on the edge of the bed. Earl steps between Cecil’s knees, his mind numb, as useless for thinking as a lump of clay.

Cecil looks up at him, his eyes shadowed in the room’s dimness, and wraps his arms around his hips, leaning against him. 

“I thought you were mad at me,” he says. 

“Mad at you?” It should seem ridiculous - how could he be mad at Cecil? - but then he gets a flash of anger, hurt, confusion from somewhere in his mind, and he presses his fingers to his temples, trying to remember when he felt those things and why. 

“I don’t think so,” he says. “I don’t know. I’m all tangled up, somehow - were we drinking?”

“Only orange milk.”

And that sounds right and wrong, both at the same time. Cecil’s hands caressing their way from his lower back over his ass and around his thighs feel the exact same way, right and wrong, all at once.

“I can’t remember anything about the party,” Earl says wonderingly. “Not really. I mean, I get that we were there, and I keep seeing these little flashes - just images, really, but I don’t know what any of it means….Cecil? Can you remember anything?”

“Sure,” Cecil says, his voice slow and hypnotic. “We drank a whole case of orange milk, we told dirty jokes about the moon, and we all busted out of the gym before sunrise. You don’t remember any of that?”

“I don’t know.” The words barely make a sound, he’s so distracted by what Cecil is doing with his hands.

Cecil touches his hips, his back, and then slides his hands around his waist, untucking his shirt. He presses his lips to Earl’s belly as he starts to unbuckle his belt. 

“Wait, Cecil, I - I mean, don’t you think we should…” his voice catches and he forgets what he was going to say, and watches as his trembling hands settle on Cecil’s shoulders. “Oh,” he says softly. “Oh _god._ ” 

Cecil’s hands, then his mouth, glide along the length of him, and Earl grits his teeth, struggling to maintain some small scrap of self-control. He is instantly and excruciatingly hard, despite his vague sense of misgiving. There’s something - something _important_ \- right on the edge of his consciousness, something they should both be thinking about, he’s sure of it, but he can barely concentrate on anything beyond the feeling of coiling excitement building outward from the point where Cecil’s lips touch his skin. 

And so his thoughts are a jumble of _I thought we weren’t doing this_ and _what changed?_ and _don’t stop, oh god please never ever stop_ and _Cecil, no, please,_ but when he finally opens his mouth to speak, all that comes out is “Cecil, yes, _yes,_ ” and he burns with shame and desire.

“Hmmm,” Cecil murmurs, pulling him down onto the bed as he leans over to the bedside table, withdrawing a luridly-labeled bottle and a foil-wrapped condom, which he places on the bedspread..

“Wait,” Earl says, but his voice shakes, his heart shudders. “Cecil…”

“Don’t you want to?”

“Yes, of _course_ I want to…it’s just…I thought…” he inhales to steady himself. 

Cecil straddles Earl’s hips, leans down, and kisses him. Earl tries to resist, to push Cecil away, but Cecil grips his arms hard and doesn’t budge, his lips pressed insistently to Earl’s. 

Earl is overwhelmed, confused, and feels like he’s suffocating. He wants Cecil, wants him badly, and the way their bodies are pressed together is impossible to ignore, his kiss undeniably arousing. _But you’re my best friend,_ he thinks. And with that thought in mind, he tenses and shoves Cecil back.

Cecil’s face looks strange in the darkness, his eyes large pools of darkness. His face is half-covered by a stray lock of hair and Earl can feel the sadness radiating from him before he says anything.

“Earl,” he half-whispers. “Please... _please,_ don’t say no.”

Earl stares at him, speechless, and somewhere in his mind he hears Cecil’s voice - but when? and where? - saying _I just want to feel something _else_ right now._ His muscles go slack, and Cecil collapses against him, his face buried against Earl’s shoulder, and Earl holds him tight, kisses his forehead, his mouth, his neck, and then pushes him back down, letting himself forget everything but a miles-deep, aching want.

Cecil rolls the condom down, his hands shaking, his breath unsteady, and presses a hesitant kiss to the reservoir tip. 

Earl loses it.

The next thing he knows, he’s shoving Cecil down onto the bed, tearing at his clothes. He slips the knot of his tie and tosses it into a corner, flips half the buttons on his shirt and tears it the rest of the way open. Cecil lifts his hips helpfully as he tugs his pants off. As soon as he’s undressed, Earl grabs his shoulder and rolls him roughly onto his stomach, climbing on top of him, knees pressed to either side of his hips.

Earl has always heard that this is a somewhat delicate process, that it takes time to get used to the presence of something inside, that it has to be taken slow to keep anyone from getting hurt. So he is surprised when Cecil pushes back against his index finger, taking him in deep. He adds a second finger, feels the tightness stretch. Cecil’s breathing is labored, coming in harsh gusts, and Earl stops moving, biting his lip, wondering if it’s too much.

In response, Cecil pushes again, harder this time, fucking himself on Earl's fingers, breath hissing between his teeth. " _Yes_ , more, please..."

He pushes inside again, holding Cecil's hips still with one hand as his fingers stretch the tight space, feeling Cecil open for him.

"Need you," Cecil says again, " _Oh!_ Right there, yes, I'm ready, just..." he pushes against Earl's hand again, and Earl really can’t wait anymore anyway, all Cecil's moaning and writhing and the heat and tightness of his body are too much.

He douses himself liberally with lube, then, holding his breath, he pushes inside. For several seconds the tightness is almost too much, but Cecil's body stretches to accommodate him, and while he is still being squeezed, it no longer feels like a problem. Not at all.

He shoves inside a little further, then further still, until he is finally almost all the way in. He can’t imagine how Cecil tolerates the invasion, but he's doing more than that, he's welcoming it, enjoying it, and both of them are breathing hard, the rasps the only sound in the silent house. 

"It’s okay," Cecil whispers insistently, "It's okay, it feels...it feels…oh _god_ it feels so _good_."

Cecil’s encouragement brings him back to himself for a fleeting handful of seconds, and he gasps, “I don’t want to hurt you - you'd tell me if - ”

"You won't," Cecil says. "Please, Earl, please, just... _please_ …don’t stop." 

He doesn’t stop. He braces one hand against the mattress, takes hold of Cecil's hip with the other. Out and in, just once, but he and Cecil groan together at the sweet, tight, dragging sensation, and already Earl can feel his control slipping again. It feels so unbelievably _good,_ and the sight of Cecil spread out on the bed underneath him, his chest heaving, teeth biting down hard on one knuckle to muffle his mewls of helpless pleasure, that’s just about the best thing ever.

"Oh _fuck_ , I don’t think I can- ”

“Yes… _yes_ … _harder,_ ” Cecil pants, and Earl repositions himself so he can do that, so he can give Cecil what he wants, and Cecil spreads his legs wider just as Earl grips his hips and hauls him up onto his knees. Earl rises up a little to kneel behind him and slams himself home, and that’s when he really hits the spot, the exact spot. He feels goosebumps fanning out across his skin even as he sees the fine hairs on the nape of Cecil’s neck stand up and Cecil moans ecstatically into the mattress, hands clenched in the bedspread.

A trembling has started somewhere deep in Cecil’s body, but he still meets every thrust eagerly, now clinging to the creaking headboard as they pick up the pace. 

Earl slides one hand down to the center of Cecil’s back, holding him down as he plunges deep, and Cecil shudders, hips jerking against the mattress, and small muscles quiver around Earl’s cock, an echo of Cecil’s pleasure.

“Oh - _ah_ \- Cecil - I’m - ” and he thinks, fleetingly, how ridiculous it is that he’s here, right now, buried deep inside Cecil’s orgasmically convulsing body, and can’t bring himself to say the word “come.” “I’m going to come!” he forces himself to say, and this is the final transgression that pushes him over the edge. 

They’re moaning more or less in unison, and these sounds gradually give way to heaving breaths, and finally to normal breathing. After what seems an appropriate amount of time has passed, Earl pushes up and walks unsteadily to the bathroom to rid himself of the condom, returning with a damp washcloth for Cecil, who accepts it shyly. Then Earl clambers back into bed, pulling Cecil close beside him, drawing the covers up to their shoulders.

Earl lies awake for a long time afterward, staring into the darkness. He wonders if it’s true that you can’t be friends with someone and have sex with them at the same time. He wonders if he wants to be friends with Cecil, or of he wants something more. He strokes Cecil’s hair gently, and Cecil stirs in his arms, snuggling back against him. Earl closes his eyes, feeling spent but unsatisfied.


	10. Erased

It’s more than a week before Earl figures out that something is not quite right with Cecil.

They’ve started packing some of Cecil’s things and taking them down to the radio station to be stored. They’re sitting on the floor, going through piles of things they’ve pulled out of Cecil’s closet. 

“Leonard says I can stay at the station until I move into my dorm,” Cecil says, as he tosses items into a cardboard box Earl salvaged from the diner’s weekly produce delivery. “But what are you going to do?”

“You know Simone, down in the Earth Sciences building?” Cecil nods. “She lets us use one of the old labs for scouts sometimes. She said there’s a break room with a bathroom and a sofa and all – she said I was welcome to it until I start classes in the fall.”

“Great,” Cecil says, but he stops packing and stares at his hands forlornly.

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’ll just miss this. Us. Here.” 

“Me too,” Earl says. He reaches out and squeezes Cecil’s hand. “You okay?” he asks.

Cecil pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, as if he has a headache, and maybe he does – his glasses have been missing since the graduation party, and although they’ve searched the house, they can’t find them anywhere. The only place they haven't looked is the last place they both remember seeing them: the high school gym. But it's barricaded off, undergoing structural repairs after the series of explosions it suffered at the hands of their classmates. Cecil has ordered a new pair but they won’t be delivered for another two weeks.

“I’m fine,” Cecil says. Without the glasses, his face looks naked and oddly vulnerable, and it makes Earl want to hug him tight, comfort him, even though Cecil doesn’t seem to want any comforting. 

Earl pulls a shoebox out of Cecil’s closet and studies its contents. He smiles, certain he’s about to snap Cecil out of his funk. “Hey, look at this! It’s that recorder your mom got you, and a bunch of old tapes. You want me to- ”

“You can leave those,” Cecil interrupts. “I won’t need them.”

“You don’t want me to pack them?”

"No, why would I?”

“This was only your absolute favorite birthday present of all time,” Earl says, holding up the recorder. _And the last thing your mother ever gave you,_ he thinks, but does not say.

Cecil shrugs noncommittally and picks up one of the tapes. "What does this say?” he asks, squinting.

Earl looks at the side of the tape case. “It says _Cecil: Radio Test, Age 15_.”

“Huh,” Cecil says. He looks perplexed, like he’s about to ask a question, but then he just shrugs. “Kid stuff,” he says. “Leave it here.” 

Earl flips through the rest of the tapes. “You sure? There are all kinds of tapes here – you interviewing your mom…here’s an interview with Abby, and look! Here’s an interview with-“

Cecil grabs the cassette out of Earl’s hand and slams it down on top of the others in the box. “Stop,” he says. “Just…stop. I don’t remember-” he stops abruptly, leaving the thought unfinished, and looks away. “Let’s just leave it here, okay?”

“Sure, okay,” Earl says. He hesitates, then asks, “What don’t you remember?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you remember getting this?” Earl persists. “Do you remember making these tapes?” 

“Of course,” Cecil says. “On my birthday.”

“Which birthday?” Earl asks.

“My fifteenth,” Cecil says, after the briefest hesitation, eyes darting back to the box of cassettes.

“Do you remember anything else about it?” Earl doesn’t even think about how tactless he’s being, he’s just honestly curious about what Cecil might have forgotten. It seems impossible for him not to remember this, but he can see from the blank look in Cecil’s eyes that he recalls nothing, absolutely nothing, about the event.

“Of course I do, I just…don’t want to talk about it. I’m going to go get some water,” Cecil mumbles as he hurries out of the room.

As soon as Cecil is gone, Earl retrieves the box of tapes and puts them and the recorder in the bottom of the box he’s packing. He’s sure Cecil will eventually regret his decision to leave the tapes behind. He covers the recorder and tapes with a few other items- blood-soaked rags, a strange, shimmering gemstone, and a handful of other items that Cecil has placed in his “to be packed” pile. 

Cecil seems more composed when he comes back. He sits on the edge of the bed, sipping his water. “How did you get all your stuff into one bag when you moved in?” he asks, looking around at the detritus of his childhood strewn about the room. “This is starting to seem hopeless.”

“I didn’t have this much stuff,” Earl said. “And then…well, I always knew I might have to leave there in a hurry. You saw…you saw how it was.” He picks up Cecil’s Boy Scout sash and worries at the edges of one of his badges without really being aware of it. “I think it’s harder for you because you have more good memories associated with your stuff,” he says, tentatively. He would have felt more certain of this, if not for the exchange they’ve just had. “I only had a couple things I wanted. My scout stuff, and one book. Everything else was just stuff.”

“Maybe all this is just stuff, too,” Cecil says, setting down the water glass and flopping back on the bed. “Maybe I should just let the Housing Authority auction it all off.”

“No, it’s not. It’s different.” 

“How different could it be? You had stuff, I’ve got stuff, everyone has stuff. Why should I be so attached to any of this?”

Earl stares at him, exasperation rising. Cecil has been irritable and dismissive all day, and now, comparing his family’s belongings to Earl’s feels insulting, demeaning. “You’re tired and bored,” he says. “It’s hard to make these kinds of decisions, I get that, but it’s not the same as not having anything. It’s not the same as having all your attachments beaten out of you, it’s- ” He wants to clap a hand over his mouth, or stuff the words back in. His cheeks are burning hot, he knows he’s blushing, and that makes him even more furious. “Fuck it,” he says. “I’m going for a walk.”

Cecil comes after him, grabs hold of his wrist. “Wait,” he says, but Earl pulls his arm away, seizes hold of Cecil’s shoulders and shakes him roughly. “Why don’t you get it? Why don’t you care? Your mother loved you. How can that just be like…like _nothing_ to you?”

Cecil recoils as if he’s been slapped, and Earl shakes him again. Not hard, but firmly, and Cecil gasps, eyes wide. 

Not for the first time, Earl wonders if Cecil is provoking him deliberately, just to make him lose control. Cecil is looking at his mouth, his gaze flicking up to Earl’s eyes and then down again, his lips slightly parted in surprise. As Earl makes an effort to loosen his grip on Cecil’s shoulders, Cecil’s arms slide around his waist.

“Are you doing this on purpose?” Earl asks, his voice breaking. “Are you? Cecil?” But then they’re kissing again, and then there’s that subtle shift, that slight change, and he feels Cecil _give in,_ leaning back against the wall. 

“Doing what?” he whispers against Earl’s mouth, his breath warm on Earl’s skin.

"Pissing me off," Earl says, pulling away and pinning Cecil's roaming hands over his head. As soon as Cecil's wrists make contact with the wall, he squirms against Earl's body.

"Is that what I'm doing?" he asks. "Pissing you off?" 

It’s too much, and as usual, Earl loses his head completely.

“I'm sorry,” he murmurs afterward, tentatively running his fingers through Cecil’s hair. "Cecil?" There's no reply. Even more softly, Earl whispers, "I love you."

But Cecil only says, “Don’t,” and shifts his head on the pillow, avoiding Earl’s touch. 

Cecil falls asleep after that, so Earl never knows if that “Don’t” was a response to what he’s just confessed, or something else. 

He wonders if Cecil would answer him, if he were to ask about it. He wonders if Cecil will even remember that it happened, or if he’ll forget it, like he seems to have forgotten his fifteenth birthday.

**Author's Note:**

> Like this chapter? Interested to see what happens next? Don't be shy, speak up in the comments. Thanks!
> 
> Also, I should mention that I absolutely had Videntefernandez's beautiful vision of Episode 56 in mind when writing the graduation party. Check it out here: http://videntefernandez.tumblr.com/tagged/episode-56
> 
> Sorry this last update took so long, work got crazy for a while there. I'm going to try to post future updates on Wednesdays.


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